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I also added popup boxes to some of the lines that represent the routes of the vessels, in this case linking to the shipping news sections of online newspaper archives so that clicking on the line representing a specific voyage brings up an image of the newspaper that contains a link to the reference in its shipping news section for that specific voyage. #TURN MXD FILE INTO WEBMAP ARCHIVE#Each popup can contain a relevant image and "Get more info" link to, for example, the Website of the archive or a Wikipedia entry on the place. I also ended up importing the Ports_and_Landmarks shape file to identify places relevant to the slave trade, from landmarks like Cape Mount, to ports like Paramaribo, to archives like the Zeeuws Archief in Middelburg that hold the logbook data on which the GIS is based. Most basically, I configured the popup boxes for the point symbols for a particular voyage to include the URL for the search window in TSTD for that same voyage, allowing users to immediately connect the data and representations of one project to those of the other. The popup box associated with clicking on each feature, line or point, is particularly useful in a Web GIS because it can include URL links to other Websites. That is accomplished laboriously but straightforwardly through the Contents panel of the Web Map and a menu that appears when the arrow to the right of each layer is selected. ![]() Those shape files do not contain the symbology and other features, such as the visibility range, of the layers in the GIS from which they were exported, necessitating a lot of work to reestablish appropriate symbols to indicate cargoes and so on within ArcGIS Online. Once that GIS had been saved to the ArcGIS cloud, I was able to add all the point and line layers for the 48 slaving voyages by selecting the Add Content button, selecting Add Layer from File, navigating to the folder of shape files on my computer, and uploading each in turn. I then saved the new map to My Content with the name Dutch and British Atlantic Slave Trade Voyages, 1751-1795. ![]() #TURN MXD FILE INTO WEBMAP FREE#Next, I started a new map from within my free ArcGIS Online account by selecting the Map link, then the New Map button, and then the Basemap button to add the same Terrain base map I used in ArcMap. Selecting all the files associated with a point or line feature class, right clicking, and selecting Send to Zipped Folder creates a compressed folder that the free ArcGIS Online accepts as an upload, as long as it does not contain more than 1,000 features. Those four types of file include the information essential to creating the Webmap: the projection, spatial reference, point or line locations, and attributes. Opening that folder reveals that each feature class exported as several files, including file.shp, file.prj. Then I used the Feature Class to Shapefile tool (in Conversion Tools, then To Shape file) to export all the point and line Feature Class files from the geodatabase to a new folder. Then, to reduce the size of the files in the Web GIS and ensure it ran smoothly, I used the Delete Field tool (in Data Management Tools, then Fields) to delete all fields except VesselID, Flag, DayOfWeek, Latitude, Longitude, TSTDURL, Cargo, and DATE from the attribute tables of the point Feature Class files. I then used a select by attribute query to find all the voyages that carried enslaved Africans and deleted all the layers for other voyages as well as the hurricane layer because the slave trade had ended by the time the hurricane record begins in 1851. ![]() Since I had used relative paths, the copy worked perfectly. In order to reduce the work involved in what was a test, being my first experience with web mapping, I copied the GIS and renamed it Slave_Voyages_WebGIS. #TURN MXD FILE INTO WEBMAP SOFTWARE#The first step in publishing the GIS on ArcGIS Online involved converting the feature class files, both line and point, to a format that the free version of that software accepts. Anyone with a broadband connection and a computer can, for example, use the Webmaps I have publish on this Website as the basis for their own Webmaps by modifying them, adding to them, deleting parts of them, and saving their creation to their own free account on ArcGIS Online. The free, non-subscription version of ArcGIS Online makes it possible for people with limited resources to publish Webmaps. ![]() To publish the GIS on the Web, I explored various applications, from the non-subscription, free version of ArcGIS Online to creating map services on a server at LSU using ArcGIS Server. ![]()
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